How good is it to play the lottery with your best mates and win a big prize on Valentine’s day? Well you can ask the sixteen members of the King’s Arms syndicate who operate from Stifford Clays Road in Orsett.

This week’s best stories of features lottery winners from all over the world. In Israel, a poor couple hoping to win enough to pay an outstanding electric bill won the top prize in the Israeli Lottery.

Lorraine Smith and her friend Paula Barraclough played the lottery and set aside £25 wins toward a holiday fund. But when fortune decided to smile on a ticket Smith bought on the last £2 on her wallet, she knew she had to share that with Barraclough as well.

Ten people in Georgia are celebrating a big lottery win. And they all have equal shares in the $1 million payout.

The lottery syndicate is composed of workers at the American Honda Motor Company’s power equipment headquarters n Alpharetta.

A Canadian couple just beat odds of 1 in 28.6 million to win a Lotto Max jackpot worth all of $26,037,102.70!

The winners in the Feb.17 draw are the husband and wife team of Mike and Tricia Montminy of Tilbury.

An old Australian couple decided to gamble the last money they had and managed to come up winners in the Lotterywest draw.

Before the win the couple had been in dire straits and were already contemplating selling their home if the mortgage payments become unmanageable.

A man kept nagging his mother to stop playing the lottery; he said it was just a waste of money. However, with the lunar new year holidays coming up, he gave his mother three numbers to use.

An Israeli couple from Tel Aviv was worried about an outstanding electric bill of 4,000 shekels so they bought a lottery ticket on Saturday. By the next day they no longer had any reason to worry about electric bills or any other unpaid bills.

This weeks feel-good stories of lottery winners includes that of a hard-up steel fitter who won a quarter million pounds and a Canadian school janitor who is set to retire after winning a $60 million lottery prize.